You may not be aware of the story of tilly, a well respected member of the Perlmonks community whom, for various reasons to do with his employment, was forced to leave the community for quite a great deal of time. He has since made a return, and he made the revelation that he had been back on many occasions, replying as an Anonymous Monk.

Yes, a lot of replies are flames and snipes, or wrong and unhelpful, but there are also some replies that are gems of wisdom, and I think the benefits of keeping Anonymous Monk's ability to make and reply to nodes far outweighs the benefits that the community would receive if we got rid of that privilege.

Remember that every user above Friar has moderation privileges: anything which is an outright flame or attack on an individual can and will be considered for deletion, and deleted if enough users agree. This applies to both registered users and anonymous ones.

One monk has a very wise message relevant to the community in their sig - examine what is being written, not who wrote it. Anonymous monks write good advice just as often as registered monks write bad advice.

-- rozallin j. thompson
The Webmistress who doesn't hesitate to use strict;